TWO LETTERS
NANCY ELLEN and Robert were sitting on the side porch, not seeming in
the least sleepy, when Kate entered the house. As she stepped out to
them, she found them laughing mysteriously.
"Take this chair, Kate," said Nancy Ellen. "Come on, Robert, let's go
stand under the maple tree and let her see whether she can see us."
"If you're going to rehearse any momentous moment of your existence,"
said Kate, "I shouldn't think of even being on the porch. I shall keep
discreetly in the house, even going at once to bed. Good-night!
Pleasant dreams!"
"Now we've made her angry," said Robert.
"I think there WAS 'a little touch of asperity,' as Agatha would say,
in that," said Nancy Ellen, "but Kate has a good heart. She'll get over
it before morning."
"Would Agatha use such a common word as 'little'?" asked Robert.
"Indeed, no!" said Nancy Ellen. "She would say 'infinitesimal.' But
all the same he kissed her."
"If she didn't step up and kiss him, never again shall I trust my
eyes!" said the doctor.
"Hush!" cautioned Nancy Ellen. "She's provoked now; if she hears that,
she'll never forgive us."
Kate did not need even a hint to start her talking in the morning. The
day was fine, a snappy tinge of autumn in the air, her head and heart
were full. Nancy Ellen would understand and sympathize; of course Kate
told her all there was to tell.
"And even at that," said Nancy Ellen, "he hasn't just come out right
square and said 'Kate, will you marry me?' as I understand it."
"Same here," laughed Kate. "He said he had to be sure about his
mother, and there was 'one other thing' he'd write me about this week,
and he'd come again next Sunday; then if things were all right with
me--the deluge!"
"And what is 'the other thing?'" asked Nancy Ellen.
"There he has me guessing. We had six, long, lovely weeks of daily
association at the lake, I've seen his home, and his inventions, and as
much of his business as is visible to the eye of a woman who doesn't
know a tinker about business. His mother has told me minutely of his
life, every day since he was born, I think. She insists that he never
paid the slightest attention to a girl before, and he says the same, so
there can't be any hidden ugly feature to mar my joy. He is
thoughtful, quick, kind, a self-made business man. He looks well
enough, he acts like a gentleman, he seldom makes a mistake in speech--"
"He doesn't say enough to MAKE any mistakes. I haven't yet heard him
talk freely, give an opinion, or discuss a question," said Nancy Ellen.
"Neither have I," said Kate. "He's very silent, thinking out more
inventions, maybe. The worst thing about him is a kind of hard-headed
self-assurance. He got it fighting for his mother from boyhood. He
knew she would freeze and starve if he didn't take care of her; he HAD
to do it. He soon found he could. It took money to do what he had to
do. He got the money. Then he began performing miracles with it. He
lifted his mother out of poverty, he dressed her 'in purple and fine
linen,' he housed her in the same kind of home other rich men of the
Lake Shore Drive live in, and gave her the same kind of service. As
most men do, when things begin to come their way, he lived for making
money alone. He was so keen on the chase he wouldn't stop to educate
and culture himself; he drove headlong on, and on, piling up more, far
more than any one man should be allowed to have; so you can see that it
isn't strange that he thinks there's nothing on earth that money can't
do. You can see THAT sticking out all over him. At the hotel, on
boats, on the trains, anywhere we went, he pushed straight for the most
conspicuous place, the most desirable thing, the most expensive. I
almost prayed sometimes that in some way he would strike ONE SINGLE
THING that he couldn't make come his way with money; but he never did.
No. I haven't an idea what he has in his mind yet, but he's going to
write me about it this week, and if I agree to whatever it is, he is
coming Sunday; then he has threatened me with a 'deluge,' whatever he
means by that."
"He means providing another teacher for Walden, taking you to Chicago
shopping for a wonderful trousseau, marrying you in his Lake Shore
palace, no doubt."
"Well, if that's what he means by a 'deluge,'" said Kate, "he'll find
the flood coming his way. He'll strike the first thing he can't do
with money. I shall teach my school this winter as I agreed to. I
shall marry him in the clothes I buy with what I earn. I shall marry
him quietly, here, or at Adam's, or before a Justice of the Peace, if
neither of you wants me. He can't pick me up, and carry me away, and
dress me, and marry me, as if I were a pauper."
"You're RIGHT about it," said Nancy Ellen. "I don't know how we came
to be so different. I should do at once any way he suggested to get
such a fine-looking man and that much money. That it would be a
humiliation to me all my after life, I wouldn't think about until the
humiliation began, and then I'd have no way to protect myself. You're
right! But I'd get out of teaching this winter if I could. I'd love
to have you here."
"But I must teach to the earn money for my outfit. I'll have to go
back to school in the same old sailor."
"Don't you care," laughed Nancy Ellen. "We know a secret!"
"That we do!" agreed Kate.
Wednesday Kate noticed Nancy Ellen watching for the boy Robert had
promised to send with the mail as soon as it was distributed, because
she was, herself. Twice Thursday, Kate hoped in vain that the suspense
would be over. It had to end Friday, if John were coming Saturday
night. She began to resent the length of time he was waiting. It was
like him to wait until the last minute, and then depend on money to
carry him through.
"He is giving me a long time to think things over," Kate said to Nancy
Ellen when there was no letter in the afternoon mail Thursday.
"It may have been lost or delayed," said Nancy Ellen. "It will come
to-morrow, surely."
Both of them saw the boy turn in at the gate Friday morning. Each saw
that he carried more than one letter. Nancy Ellen was on her feet and
nearer to the door; she stepped to it, and took the letters, giving
them a hasty glance as she handed them to Kate.
"Two," she said tersely. "One, with the address written in the clear,
bold hand of a gentleman, and one, the straggle of a country
clod-hopper."
Kate smiled as she took the letters: "I'll wager my hat, which is my
most precious possession," she said, "that the one with the beautifully
written address comes from the 'clod-hopper,' and the 'straggle' from
the 'gentleman.'"
She glanced at the stamping and addresses and smiled again: "So it
proves," she said. "While I'm about it, I'll see what the
'clod-hopper' has to say, and then I shall be free to give my whole
attention to the 'gentleman.'"
"Oh, Kate, how can you!" cried Nancy Ellen.
"Way I'm made, I 'spect," said Kate. "Anyway, that's the way this is
going to be done."
She dropped the big square letter in her lap and ran her finger under
the flap of the long, thin, beautifully addressed envelope, and drew
forth several quite as perfectly written sheets. She read them slowly
and deliberately, sometimes turning back a page and going over a part
of it again. When she finished, she glanced at Nancy Ellen while
slowly folding the sheets. "Just for half a cent I'd ask you to read
this," she said.
"I certainly shan't pay anything for the privilege, but I'll read it,
if you want me to," offered Nancy Ellen.
"All right, go ahead," said Kate. "It might possibly teach you that
you can't always judge a man by appearance, or hastily; though just why
George Holt looks more like a 'clod-hopper' than Adam, or Hiram, or
Andrew, it passes me to tell."
She handed Nancy Ellen the letter and slowly ripped open the flap of
the heavy white envelope. She drew forth the sheet and sat an instant
with it in her fingers, watching the expression of Nancy Ellen's face,
while she read the most restrained yet impassioned plea that a man of
George Holt's nature and opportunities could devise to make to a woman
after having spent several months in the construction of it. It was a
masterly letter, perfectly composed, spelled, and written; for among
his other fields of endeavour, George Holt had taught several terms of
country school, and taught them with much success; so that he might
have become a fine instructor, had it been in his blood to stick to
anything long enough to make it succeed. After a page as she turned
the second sheet Nancy Ellen glanced at Kate, and saw that she had not
opened the creased page in her hands. She flamed with sudden
irritation.
"You do beat the band!" she cried. "You've watched for two days and
been provoked because that letter didn't come. Now you've got it,
there you sit like a mummy and let your mind be so filled with this
idiotic drivel that you're not ever reading John Jardine's letter that
is to tell you what both of us are crazy to know."
"If you were in any mood to be fair and honest, you'd admit that you
never read a finer letter than THAT," said Kate. "As for THIS, I never
was so AFRAID in all my life. Look at that!"
She threw the envelope in Nancy Ellen's lap.
"That is the very first line of John Jardine's writing I have ever
seen," she said. "Do you see anything about it to ENCOURAGE me to go
farther?"
"You Goose!" cried the exasperated Nancy Ellen. "I suppose he
transacts so much business he scarcely ever puts pen to paper. What's
the difference how he writes? Look at what he is and what he does! Go
on and read his letter."
Kate arose and walked to the window, turning her back to Nancy Ellen,
who sat staring at her, while she read John Jardine's letter. Once
Nancy Ellen saw Kate throw up her head and twist her neck as if she
were choking; then she heard a great gulping sob down in her throat;
finally Kate turned and stared at her with dazed, incredulous eyes.
Slowly she dropped the letter, deliberately set her foot on it, and
leaving the room, climbed the stairs. Nancy Ellen threw George Holt's
letter aside and snatched up John Jardine's. She read:
MY DEREST KATE: I am a day late with this becos as I told you I have
no schooling and in writing a letter is where I prove it, so I never
write them, but it was not fare to you for you not to know what kind of
a letter I would write if I did write one, so here it is very bad no
dout but the best I can possably do which has got nothing at all to do
with my pashion for you and the aughful time I will have till I here
from you. If you can stand for this telagraf me and I will come first
train and we will forget this and I will never write another letter.
With derest love from Mother, and from me all the love of my hart.
Forever yours only, JOHN JARDINE.
The writing would have been a discredit to a ten-year-old schoolboy.
Nancy Ellen threw the letter back on the floor; with a stiffly extended
finger, she poked it into the position in which she thought she had
found it, and slowly stepped back.
"Great God!" she said amazedly. "What does the man mean? Where does
that dainty and wonderful little mother come in? She must be a regular
parasite, to take such ease and comfort for herself out of him, and not
see that he had time and chance to do better than THAT for himself.
Kate will never endure it, never in the world! And by the luck of the
very Devil, there comes that school-proof thing in the same mail, from
that abominable George Holt, and Kate reads it FIRST. It's too bad! I
can't believe it! What did his mother mean?"
Suddenly Nancy Ellen began to cry bitterly; between sobs she could hear
Kate as she walked from closet and bureau to her trunk which she was
packing. The lid slammed heavily and a few minutes later Kate entered
the room dressed for the street.
"Why are you weeping?" she asked casually.
Her eyes were flaming, her cheeks scarlet, and her lips twitching.
Nancy Ellen sat up and looked at her. She pointed to the letter: "I
read that," she said.
"Well, what do I care?" said Kate. "If he has no more respect for me
than to write me such an insult as that, why should I have the respect
for him to protect him in it? Publish it in the paper if you want to."
"Kate, what are you going to do?" demanded Nancy Ellen.
"Three things," said Kate, slowly putting on her long silk gloves.
"First, I'm going to telegraph John Jardine that I never shall see him
again, if I can possibly avoid it. Second, I'm going to send a drayman
to get my trunk and take it to Walden. Third, I'm going to start out
and walk miles, I don't know or care where; but in the end, I'm going
to Walden to clean the schoolhouse and get ready for my winter term of
school."
"Oh, Kate, you are such a fine teacher! Teach him! Don't be so
hurried! Take more time to think. You will break his heart," pleaded
Nancy Ellen.
Kate threw out both hands, palms down.
"P-a-s-h, a-u-g-h, h-a-r-t, d-o-u-t, d-e-r-e," she slowly spelled out
the letters. "What about my heart and my pride? Think I can respect
that, or ask my children to respect it? But thank you and Robert, and
come after me as often as you can, as a mercy to me. If John persists
in coming, to try to buy me, as he thinks he can buy anything he wants,
you needn't let him come to Walden; for probably I won't be there until
I have to, and I won't see him, or his mother, so he needn't try to
bring her in. Say good-bye to Robert for me."
She walked from the house, head erect, shoulders squared, and so down
the street from sight. In half an hour a truckman came for her trunk,
so Nancy Ellen made everything Kate had missed into a bundle to send
with it. When she came to the letters, she hesitated.
"I guess she didn't want them," she said. "I'll just keep them awhile
and if she doesn't ask about them, the next time she comes, I'll burn
them. Robert must go after her every Friday evening, and we'll keep
her until Monday, and do all we can to cheer her; and this very day he
must find out all there is to know about that George Holt. That IS the
finest letter I ever read; she does kind of stand up for him; and in
the reaction, impulsive as she is and self-confident--of course she
wouldn't, but you never can tell what kind of fool a girl will make of
herself, in some cases."
Kate walked swiftly, finished two of the errands she set out to do,
then her feet carried her three miles from Hartley on the Walden road,
before she knew where she was, so she proceeded to the village.
Mrs. Holt was not at home, but the house was standing open. Kate found
her room cleaned, shining, and filled with flowers. She paid the
drayman, opened her trunk, and put away her dresses, laying out all the
things which needed washing; then she bathed, put on heavy shoes, and
old skirt and waist, and crossing the road sat in a secluded place in
the ravine and looked stupidly at the water. She noticed that
everything was as she had left it in the spring, with many fresher
improvements, made, no doubt, to please her. She closed her eyes,
leaned against a big tree, and slow, cold and hot shudders alternated
in shaking her frame.
She did not open her eyes when she heard a step and her name called.
She knew without taking the trouble to look that George had come home,
found her luggage in her room, and was hunting for her. She heard him
come closer and knew when he seated himself that he was watching her,
but she did not care enough even to move. Finally she shifted her
position to rest herself, opened her eyes, and looked at him without a
word. He returned her gaze steadily, smiling gravely. She had never
seen him looking so well. He had put in the summer grooming himself,
he had kept up the house and garden, and spent all his spare time on
the ravine, and farming on the shares with his mother's sister who
lived three miles east of them. At last she roused herself and again
looked at him.
"I had your letter this morning," she said.
"I was wondering about that," he replied.
"Yes, I got it just before I started," said Kate. "Are you surprised
to see me?"
"No," he answered. "After last year, we figured you might come the
last of this week or the first of next, so we got your room ready
Monday."
"Thank you," said Kate. "It's very clean and nice."
"I hope soon to be able to offer you such a room and home as you should
have," he said. "I haven't opened my office yet. It was late and hot
when I got home in June and Mother was fussing about this winter--that
she had no garden and didn't do her share at Aunt Ollie's, so I have
farmed most of the summer, and lived on hope; but I'll start in and
make things fly this fall, and by spring I'll be sailing around with a
horse and carriage like the best of them. You bet I am going to make
things hum, so I can offer you anything you want."
"You haven't opened an office yet?" she asked for the sake of saying
something, and because a practical thing would naturally suggest itself
to her.
"I haven't had a breath of time," he said in candid disclaimer.
"Why don't you ask me what's the matter?"
"Didn't figure that it was any of my business in the first place," he
said, "and I have a pretty fair idea, in the second."
"But how could you have?" she asked in surprise.
"When your sister wouldn't give me your address, she hinted that you
had all the masculine attention you cared for; then Tilly Nepple
visited town again last week and she had been sick and called Dr. Gray.
She asked him about you, and he told what I fine time you had at
Chautauqua and Chicago, with the rich new friends you'd made. I was
watching for you about this time, and I just happened to be at the
station in Hartley last Saturday when you got off the train with your
fine gentleman, so I stayed over with some friends of mine, and I saw
you several times Sunday. I saw that I'd practically no chance with
you at all; but I made up my mind I'd stick until I saw you marry him,
so I wrote just as I would if I hadn't known there was another man in
existence."
"That was a very fine letter," said Kate.
"It is a very fine, deep, sincere love that I am offering you," said
George Holt. "Of course I could see prosperity sticking out all over
that city chap, but it didn't bother me much, because I knew that you,
of all women, would judge a man on his worth. A rising young
professional man is not to be sneered at, at least until he makes his
start and proves what he can do. I couldn't get an early start,
because I've always had to work, just as you've seen me last summer and
this, so I couldn't educate myself so fast, but I've gone as fast and
far as I could."
Kate winced. This was getting on places that hurt and to matters she
well understood, but she was the soul of candour. "You did very well
to educate yourself as you have, with no help at all," she said.
"I've done my best in the past, I'm going to do marvels in the future,
and whatever I do, it is all for you and yours for the taking," he said
grandiosely.
"Thank you," said Kate. "But are you making that offer when you can't
help seeing that I'm in deep trouble?"
"A thousand times over," he said. "All I want to know about your
trouble is whether there is anything a man of my size and strength can
do to help you."
"Not a thing," said Kate, "in the direction of slaying a gay deceiver,
if that's what you mean. The extent of my familiarities with John
Jardine consists in voluntarily kissing him twice last Sunday night for
the first and last time, once for himself, and once for his mother,
whom I have since ceased to respect."
George Holt was watching her with eyes lynx-sharp, but Kate never saw
it. When she mentioned her farewell of Sunday night, a queer smile
swept over his face and instantly disappeared.
"I should thing any girl might be permitted that much, in saying a
final good-bye to a man who had shown her a fine time for weeks," he
commented casually.
"But I didn't know I was saying good-bye," explained Kate. "I expected
him back in a week, and that I would then arrange to marry him. That
was the agreement we made then."
As she began to speak, George Holt's face flashed triumph at having led
her on; at what she said it fell perceptibly, but he instantly
controlled it and said casually: "In any event, it was your own
business."
"It was," said Kate. "I had given no man the slightest encouragement,
I was perfectly free. John Jardine was courting me openly in the
presence of his mother and any one who happened to be around. I
intended to marry him. I liked him as much as any man need be liked.
I don't know whether it was the same feeling Nancy Ellen had for Robert
Gray or not, but it was a whole lot of feeling of some kind. I was
satisfied with it, and he would have been. I meant to be a good wife
to him and a good daughter to his mother, and I could have done much
good in the world and extracted untold pleasure from the money he would
have put in my power to handle. All was going 'merry as a marriage
bell,' and then this morning came my Waterloo, in the same post with
your letter."
"Do you know what you are doing?" cried George Holt, roughly, losing
self-control with hope. "YOU ARE PROVING TO ME, AND ADMITTING TO
YOURSELF, THAT YOU NEVER LOVED THAT MAN AT ALL. You were flattered,
and tempted with position and riches, but your heart was not his, or
you would be mighty SURE of it, don't you forget that!"
"I am not interested in analyzing exactly what I felt for him," said
Kate. "It made small difference then; it makes none at all now. I
would have married him gladly, and I would have been to him all a good
wife is to any man; then in a few seconds I turned squarely against
him, and lost my respect for him. You couldn't marry me to him if he
were the last and only man on earth; but it hurt terribly, let me tell
you that!"
George Holt suddenly arose and went to Kate. He sat down close beside
her and leaned toward her.
"There isn't the least danger of my trying to marry you to him," he
said, "because I am going to marry you myself at the very first
opportunity. Why not now? Why not have a simple ceremony somewhere at
once, and go away until school begins, and forget him, having a good
time by ourselves? Come on, Kate, let's do it! We can go stay with
Aunt Ollie, and if he comes trying to force himself on you, he'll get
what he deserves. He'll learn that there is something on earth he
can't buy with his money."
"But I don't love you," said Kate.
"Neither did you love him," retorted George Holt. "I can prove it by
what you say. Neither did you love him, but you were going to marry
him, and use all his wonderful power of position and wealth, and trust
to association to BRING love. You can try that with me. As for wealth,
who cares? We are young and strong, and we have a fine chance in the
world. You go on and teach this year, and I'll get such a start that
by next year you can be riding around in your carriage, proud as
Pompey."
"Of course we could make it all right, as to a living," said Kate. "Big
and strong as we are, but--"
Then the torrent broke. At the first hint that she would consider his
proposal George Holt drew her to him and talked volumes of impassioned
love to her. He gave her no chance to say anything; he said all there
was to say himself; he urged that Jardine would come, and she should
not be there. He begged, he pleaded, he reasoned. Night found Kate
sitting on the back porch at Aunt Ollie's with a confused memory of
having stood beside the little stream with her hand in George Holt's
while she assented to the questions of a Justice of the Peace, in the
presence of the School Director and Mrs. Holt. She knew that
immediately thereafter they had walked away along a hot, dusty country
road; she had tried to eat something that tasted like salted ashes.
She could hear George's ringing laugh of exultation breaking out afresh
every few minutes; in sudden irritation at the latest guffaw she
clearly remembered one thing: in her dazed and bewildered state she
had forgotten to tell him that she was a Prodigal Daughter.